Eurasia

10/12/2013

WikiLeaks barged into offices all over Central Asia, pressuring independent journalists like these reporters at the highly-respected Asia Plus to instantly sign agreements on WikiLeaks' terms to publish US cables about their country.Here Marat Mamadshoev and a colleague are being told to sign the agreement immediately, but decline.

This is my quick take upon first view of this video (so sorry if there are mistakes or names missing, they will be fixed). It's available for rent ($2.99) or pay $7.00 plus on Vimeo. Naturally, I'm unhappy that I had to give a dime to WL, which I oppose on principle -- and I have to wonder how it is that Paypal could agree to accept these payments when it has blocked payments directly from WikiLeaks (and I plan to raise this issue with both Vimeo and PayPal).

This piece of vile stuff is supposed to be Assange's attempt to provide an "antidote" to a movie about him coming out in theaters October 18 which he doesn't like called The Fifth Estate (it's too critical) which he trying to kill off in various ways.

Perhaps he's counting on the fact that most people don't know anything about Central Asia, and will merely be impressed that he and his merry band of hacksters caroming around the perilous but picturesque mountain roads of Central Asia -- complete with Soviet-style policeman stopping and searching traffic, tunnels under repair until who knows when, and lots of sheep blocking the road -- are the coolest of cypherphunk hipsters going on a " journalism" trip through dangerous territory.

So an unintended bonus is that with Wahlstrom narrating most of the film -- when the Great One Himself isn't butting in and pontificating -- is that WikiLeaks cannot claim anymore that Shamir and Son don't have anything to do with them and don't represent them. They most surely do, as this film proves.

Johannes is a Russian speaker because he likely grew up in Russia or at least speaking Russian with his father -- who has played a sordid role in the Snowden affair, too, about which you can read on my other blog, Minding Russia. But he and the other handlers or minders or whoever the hell they are really have no sense of this region, whatever their Russian language ability, and burst in aggressively -- and disgustingly -- to try to strong-arm local news media in dire straits in Central Asia, where there is a huge list of murdered, jailed, disappeared and beaten journalists, into publishing WikiLeaks cables.

Another bonus is that one of the Russian-speaking journalists on the tour admits openly that he fabricated stories at his job (supposedly because he felt himself to be pressured to do so by his bosses and their need to sell newspapers) and then was ultimately fired. This is just about the level of journalistic quality we can expect throughout this film.

(The reason I mixed up Wahlstrom and this Russian in an earlier version of this blog, since corrected is because both are accused of fabrications; the Russian admits it in the film, Wahlstrom denies it. And while some WikiLeaks operative @Troushers is accusing me of "lying" here in my summary of the dialogue of this Russian journalist, I stand by it -- indeed he openly admits he fabricated letters and indeed the implication is that he was pressured by his boss, who needed to sell papers even if he didn't say literally that phrase -- Internet kids are so literalist. The obvious reality is, the theme throughout the entire film is that editors and journalists in mainstream media only do things to sell newspapers -- i.e. the obvious point of the snarky portrayal of Bill Keller and Sulzberger talking about traffic for a column of Bill's "half supportive" of Obama. Here's the script verbatim from Dmitry Velikovsky, from Russkiy Reporter, who has been active in covering Manning's trial in the past. Russkiy Reporter also sponsored the showing of the film in Moscow.

Velikovsky: I began with some funny study. I was obliged to edit the column "letters of readers". But the problem was that there were absolutely no letters to edit. But the column should be published twice a day. And so I was obliged to to invent those letters me myself. And I just invented a lot of them.

Wahlstrom: did you get some, any letters at all from real readers?

Velikovsky: Yes we got some maybe three, four or five in two months but they were all containing some critics.

Wahlstrom: but these letters you didn't publish.

Velikovsky: I wanted to publish those letters in the factual content of the newspaper because I found it rather important to have some kind of self criticism. But our marketing department had no self criticism and they forbid me to publish it. So i invented letters about problems of veterans, problems of pensioners, problems of no matter whom. So that's how I became a journalist.

Cue tinkly music...

Astoundingly, this aggressive, beligerent crew have no sense of themselves in this film, so imbued are they with their self-righteousness, even as they beam in Julian Assange on Skype who instructs the locals how they are to treat this material.

It's very clear WikiLeaks has absolutely no interest in the substance of the local stories, they just want to collect partners -- or conversely, shame those potential partners who refuse to deal with them for various reasons by making them look like they are boot-licking lackeys of the United States.

They tape phone conversations with people that are rather sensitive -- like a journalist in danger discussing whether he should publish a story about somebody who wants to run a coup in Tajikistan (!) -- and we have no idea if the people involved were informed that these calls would be taped -- and included in the film.

The single most damaging aspect I've seen in this agitprop trash is that the utterly unsupported claim is made that the local press are paid by the US Embassy to print flattering things about the US in order to get the leaders and publics of these countries to bend over while the US uses them as a launching pad and staging area for their war in Afghanistan.

The WikiLeaks people are too ignorant and blinded by their anti-American ideology to understand that a) the US has no need for this because these countries have cooperated anyway b) these tyrants have their own interests in playing off the US against Russia and China c) it doesn't matter as the US is pulling out of Afghanistan next year anyway.

Now, I write as someone who for six years worked at EurasiaNet and Open Society Foundation and wrote critically about the US role in Central Asia, particularly about the severe human rights and humanitarian issues -- about which the US government was oftne silent -- and the issues around the Northern Distribution Network, the supply path to Afghanistan from Russia which enabled the US to bring non-lethal cargo to NATO troops.

I also worked in the past as a free-lancer for RFE/RL ("(Un)Civil Society" and "Media Matters") and never experienced any censorship -- I wrote and published directly to the site. I recall only instances when care was taken in covering mass demonstrations once in Ukraine to make sure that the article didn't incite people -- as RFE/RL has a history of being charged with causing uprisings, i.e. in the Hungarian revolution and invasion by Soviet troops. RFE/RL is funded by Congress, but it doesn't have overlords hanging over you as you write -- there is far more independent coverage there than anything you'd see at RT.com, the Kremlin-sponsored propaganda outlet or Al Jazeera.

I have no relationship whatsoever to the US government, so I am certainly qualified to say that this film is an unfair hatchet job on people in harm's way -- oh, so typical of WikiLeaks.

The film opens with the WikiLeaks crew rolling through the mountains with Mehrabanb Fazrollah of Pyandj, Tajikistan, born 18 October 1962, in the back seat of the car telling his story. He was held five years in Guantanamo about which you can read some here.

Through a series of astoundingly leading questions, broad innuendos or outright promptings, the WL gang incites Fazrollah into saying he really knew nothing of any military significance, and his jailing was all for nothing, and boy is he mad. I don't know anything of his case except what I've read in the papers, but the duplicitious smiles and repeating of what foreigners want to hear are very old stories to me from having traveled in this region (I haven't ever been in Tajikistan but I've spent years travelling to Russia and other countries and interviewing Tajiks outside of Tajikistan).

Assange claims bitterly that this poor fellow spent five years ""to find out about a couple of fucking refugees in Tajikistan".

Actually, that's not even what the cable said or even what the man in the film says. They said there were 100,000 refugees. This is relevant of course regarding the Northern Alliance and the Tajiks in Afghanistan. The fellow is charged with membership in the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan (IMT) allied with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group on the American list of terrorist organizations.

Sorry, but this is not nothing, these are real terrorism movements, even if supposedly in decline (like, you know, Al Shabaab was in decline and chased out of their stronghold when they hit Westgate Mall in Kenya?)

You would never know from Assange's sneers that this is a country that was in a civil war for years, that it had the highest number of journalists murdered -- some 50, nearly as many as Algeria, also in a civil war at the time, that these journalists were killed by Islamists because they were secular or visa versa because they were not approved Muslims killed by state security. The war is a complicated one but to pretend that terrorism and war isn't a factor here -- right next to Afghanistan -- is absurd.

This is of course the game, too, of the International Relations Realist school in Washington and elsewhere, who minimize terrorism and laugh it away as a fantasy of Pentagon planners. But the reality is that both are true -- real terrorist acts have occurred here and there are in fact real Islamists pressuring secular society including press, and there are also fake terrorists that the oppressive government thinks up to keep itself in power. And you know something? I surely do not trust Julian Assange and his crew of losers to tell the difference.

I will never forget in my life the terrified face of a Tajik journalist who had been receiving death threats that I helped rescue from Tajikistan in the 1990s -- and it was a brave man going the extra mile inside the US Embassy actually that got him and his family out of there.

In the film, after reading some cables on Gitmo -- and as I said, the cases may be innocent, but the WL goons are hardly the judge, and there are real complex problems of terrorism and pressure on secularism in these countries -- Assange and Wahlstrom sit and guffaw about a line in a memo they've found about Bildt getting in touch with Karl Rove instead of really trying to understand the complexities of the region They find this such a smoking gun and so "evil" that they roar for minutes, but we don't get the joke.

The translator asks outrageously leading questions and they all laughed and carried on and made it clear they sympathized with the Tajik taken from the battlefield from Gitmo and don't interview him impartially or critically at all. In the same way the pick up a memo from someone named Michael Owens, and start roaring about the US "empire of the 21st century" -- which is of course a rather lack-luster claim these days -- some empire of the 21st century which they are just now leaving, eh?

Then they read from cables -- only partially -- with a "scene-setter" -- talking about how the Tajiks have "unfailingly" allowed their overflights, which is all they really wanted from them. They then purport to read from a cable implying that these "imperialist Americans" in Dushanbe want to "make the local media more pro-American" and will first plant positive stories in the Russian media, then pay the local media to reprint them in the local press.

They don't actually cite from any document or give any source, and it isn't in any known cable from the WikiLeaks Cablegate already published that the US Embassy engages in this practice.

So without anything to bolster this claim, WikiLeaks smears gazeta.ru, Interfax, and Ekho Moskvy, claiming that they've somehow engaged in this practice.

It really is an outright lie. I have read the Russian-language press in this region for years. They are critical of the US and there aren't these glowing planted pieces they imagine. And the US doesn't need to engage in such a silly, crude practice.

Secondly, none of these papers in the region have very big readerships -- they don't have the capacity. We are talking about newspapers with 50,000 or 100,000 or 500,000 possibly at the most, but more at the low end. It's just not a way to reach people. Internet penetration is very low in some of the countries -- it's about 60% in Russia but drops down sharply as you go East.

The US already has Voice of America as an outlet to cover the perspectives of the US, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty which serves to enhance or enable struggling local media -- they have open partnerships with some local stations, and because they are far more independent than the official media of these authoritarian states, they have more credibility. To be sure, RFE/RL are not going to be radically antithetical to the foreign policy of the United States, any more than the BBC or Al Jazeera or RT.com. But unlike Al Jazeera and RT.com, RFE/RL really tries to cover critical local news without fear or favour, and proof of that is just how many journalists have been arrested, jailed or expelled over the decades. The US government doesn't need to crudely pay somebody to hide behind, in other words. But these, too, don't have a huge audience outside the intelligentsia in the big cities.

The fact is, WikiLeaks has not produced proof of this disreputable claim, because they've cited one cable only partially where it sounds like a proposal that one doesn't know was fulfilled, and in citing another cable, in Kyrgyzstan, it appears that the Kyrgyz foreign minister presents this idea, and that it doesn't come from the Americans.

To be sure, paid-for press and infomercials and advertorials are rampant in this region in the official and unofficial press. But to claim that these brave independent outlets take payments to portray te US nicely is just an outright smear for which there isn't an iota of proof. It puts these brave people in danger to suggest it.

But because there are a half dozen or so mistakes in the translation that makes me sound like I'm saying the opposite of what I actually said [fortunately fixed within a day!], and because not everybody reads Russian, I'm reprinting the original Russian questions and my answers in English below. I've asked them to make the corrections. I don't mind, because this is an important independent publication and I support its mission. I think they do a good job.

I'm not sure how they came to ask me, a person who is not a formal expert on the region, for such an extensive interview, but they did, perhaps in search of independent analysis.

Although I've spent a career of 35 years in this field where I have travelled extensively throughout Eurasia, and lived and worked in Russia and travelled frequently to Russia, Belarus, Poland in particular for OSCE, I have never been to a single Central Asian country. I worked in the Central Eurasian Program at OSI for six years without such a boon. It's not for any lack of desire; it just so happened that at different times when I was actually invited to go to Kyrgzystan when I worked with various human rights groups, or Kazakhstan when I was a public member at the OSCE, it simply happened that I couldn't go. I doubt I could get a visa to Turkmenistan, having written critically about it for OSI for six years, or Uzbekistan, where I also wrote critically for two years -- and of course before that, I edited two weeklies for RFE/RL and other publications for many years.

Even so, I study the regional Russian-language and English-language press very carefully, go to all the conferences I can, and interview people directly either when they visit the US, or when I see them at international conferences or over email and Skype. That's certainly not a substitute for a personal visit, where you can get the feel of things and have many important one-on-one conversations. But in lack of direct exposure on my skin of the winds of Central Asia, I'm no different than most pundits who have either never been there, or have been there only infrequently, and don't even speak any regional languages.

I do think there's an advantage to having a critical independent view of this critical region. I think those not in formal structures can speak out more loudly about the corrosive effect on human rights that the US and Europe have had; the ongoing pernicious role that Russia plays; and the troublesome future of Chinese domination -- not to mention the ways in which the oppressive autocratic regimes play these factors off against each other to keep themselves in power and their people miserable.

You have nothing to lose if your job does not depend on some certain perspective. I find that the status quo in the human rights movement is to minimize the threat of terror or unrest and play up the awfulness of the regimes. That's a whitewash, given the groups in the region that have many, many more thousands of adherents that Western-style human rights groups -- like Hizb-ut-Tahir.

As for Washington, I find that far from there being the "neo con" belief that a) there is rampant terrorism and a horrible threat of Islamization and/or b) some imminent "Arab Spring" coming, there is actually nothing of the sort. Oh, there's that one paper at Jamestown Foundation or something, but that's it.

That is, those on the left, the "progressives" and the "RealPolitik" adherents constantly pontificate as if there were some horrid neo-cons or hawks or conservatives saying these things, but in fact these groups, which have dwindling influence in any event, either are following RealPolitik themselves or don't even care at all about this region (mainly the latter).

So in my view, there is this whole fake industry of anti-anti commentary, which runs like this:

"There isn't any Islamic threat at all in this region, perish the thought, it's just a poor region with dictators who in fact go overboard suppressing legitimate Muslim activity"

"There's no Muslim fervour in fact, these states are Sovietized and secularized".

"Nothing is going to happen when troops leave, it is all wildly exaggerated and people who say that seem not to realize that the US troops are the conflict generator, not the IMU"

"Russia has little influence any more in this region; it has less gas extraction, it has less money, it has length troop strength and its efforts to make a Warsaw Pact -- the CSTO -- or a Soviet Re-Union with a customs union have mainly failed."

And so on.

While each one of those statements can be true up to a point, they also lead to this strange endorsement of the status quo in these regions that in fact ends up serving the regimes, in my view.

Russia's influence is considerable, and it has been behind unrest by its action (as it was in Bakiyev's ouster and its threats to Atambayev) or inaction (with the pogroms in Osh). The remittance economies are huge -- for the labour migrants from Tajikistan in particular, but increasingly Uzbekistan and even Turkmenistan. That means that Russia winds up dominating the lives of these countries through some of their most vulnerable citizens -- not just the mainly male workers but the females left back home as head of households with children. The Russian language did not disappear from this region, even if it is taught less, because dominating Russian mainstream media, and Russian-controlled social media like mail.ru and Vkontakte, are very big factors in the media space in this region.

As for terrorism, sure, it gets exaggerated and the regimes "do it to themselves". But there are also real terrorist acts that occur. There is a sense that the presence of US troops in Afghanistan has ensured a kind of "frozen conflict" in this region that isn't on the official list of the frozen conflicts. The IMU has been tied up mainly fighting NATO troops. So when they go away, then what? Where do they go, those 5000 or 8000 or however many fighters there are? (And probably there are analysts saying they are only 2000, but who really knows, what, you did a door-to-door survey, guys?) Will they peacefully melt back into the countryside and farm happily? Or what? I think it's okay to look at that question critically without being branded as a terrorism hysteric.

Ditto the question of "Arab Spring". No one thinks there is any Arab Spring coming to Central Asia. I don't know of a single pundit or analyst saying this. Yet again, there is the "anti-anti-" industry making this claim, mainly from the Registan gang. The problem is that when you adopt that scornful skepticism, you stop seeing reality when it appears. As Paul Goble put it, there is a way in which talking about the Arab Spring is a little spring in itself. And there are signs of unrest here and there, and you don't know how they will turn out.

Remember, the same gang at Registan -- Sarah Kendzior and Katy Pearce -- were predicting with firm determination that discussion of oppression on the Internet was causing a chill in use, a decline in use, and even the shuttering of popular discussion pages. They implied that there would never be any Twitter revolution in Azerbaijan, that it was going to be slow and incremental and we shouldn't artificially speed it up by over-amplifying human rights cases.

Yet thousands of people keep demonstrating in Azerbaijan despite the news of repression, and they keep using Internet tools to make their case -- tools that Pearce is now blithely measuring with machinopology as if she had never written that Internet use would be chilled by such expression. It hasn't been. Facebook membership boomed. Will this "spring" last forever? I truly doubt it. Not with potential European and American oil interests -- and actually existing Russian and Iranian oil interests -- in this mix. Everybody will blame the West for the crackdown in Azerbaijan that is likely to be inevitable and thorough, and fume at the regime-tropic USAID grantees that they ignored last year (or even cooperated with) as the smoking gun of American perfidy. But it will be Russia's money and military role that will be the bigger factor.

This is how I'm seeing it, in the end: To the extent Russian wants or needs conflict, or is weakened and can't efficiently prevent or manage conflict, there will be conflict in Central Asia after NATO troops are withdrawn.

Part of that resistance to Russian state intrusion will be Islamic ferment. If analysts were busy telling everyone these were secular Soviet states and Arab Spring can't happen, they will be uncomfortably confronted with the reality that Islam is a great organizing tool in countries where it has historic roots, and this need not be seen as a threat to the West. Yet because they've been engaged in such an industry telling us it's not a threat to the West, they will be embarrassed when in fact it will be -- as they emblematically were when the Egyptian woman activist just feted at the State Department turned out to be such an anti-American hater, 9/11 celebrator, and horrid anti-semite on Twitter, and not because she was hacked -- a fiction State had to indulge in to save face.

02/24/2013

This is my little blog on Tajikistan that comes out on Saturdays. I was travelling abroad and working on a project this last month so I missed two weeks, but I hope to be back on track. If you are reading this on TinyLetter you will have to come to my blog Different Stans for the links in RU and TJ as these are blocked by this mail system. Write me at catfitzny@yahoo.com with comments or requests to be added to the mailing list.

HEADLINES

o US Secretary of State Visits Tajikistan

o Tajik President Calls on Army to Resist External Threats

o Journalist Stabbing a Warning for Tajik Opposition

COMMENTARY

Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake, Jr. visited Dushanbe February 20-21 and met with President Emomali Rahmon. There is nothing on the US Embassy Dushanbe web site (yet) about this meeting, and only a picture on the Embassy Facebook page; very little anywhere else.

The independent Tajik press reported an alleged offer to make Tajikistan available for NATO equipment withdrawals, but the official did not seem very high level and later the same press reported just on the English-language page reported "Washington reprotedly does not plan to use Tajikistan’s infrastructure
during the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan." So the US seemed to be saying "thanks but no thanks". Too mountainous?

Into this vacuum of information steps a Russian analyst as usual, speculating that the purpose of Blake's trip was to shore up commitments from Dushanbe to let US and NATO military "obyekty" (installations) stay on the territory of Tajikistan. It's interesting that he doesn't say "troops," although there are some US "troops" in Tajikistan doing training and advising. He talks about the "obyekty" (facilities) which in a sense are what the US is already helping with by donating equipment.

The Russian analyst Anatoly Knyazev from the Institute for Oriental Studies believes the US will bribe officials and support a "thin layer" of students and nationalist intellectuals ("thin layer" is old Soviet Pravda parlance for a discredited social class not according to the Marxist-Leninist plan). This "thin layer" - the Oreo cookie filling smushed between Russia and the US and ready to be dipped into the milk of China (so I'm visualizing vividly now) is not really going to be allowed to succeed, as the US won't fund them, but they will be used to put pressure on Rahmon. Mkay.

Meanwhile, USAID is busy funding comic books in the Tajik language, so I don't think anyone's going to be colouring outside the lines...

Note that in the US photo op, Rahmon is smiling and the chandelier is featured. Note that in the Tajik photo op Rahmon is frowning and the wallpaper is featured. Also, note that the flower display at these things are always done beautifully.

The Tajik military parade last week provided an opportunity for Dushanbe to show off their hardware including some still-shiny Chaikas. Haven't seen those in awhile.

The trial of the suspect in the killing of the security official in Badakhshan last year has opened, and surprise, surprise, it's behind closed doors.

There was a bit of a kerfluffle with an Iranian presidential candidate speaking of a "Greater Iran" and Iran "taking back" Tajikistan, Armenian and Azerbaijan, but...well, when we saw the phrase "presidential candidate" we knew that this story couldn't be true, because those things are real in the Iranian dictatorship. Anyway, Ahmadineajad is coming to Dushanbe for the spring festival of Novruz in a few weeks and surely they'll sort things out. Meanwhile, we learn from RFE/RL and @eTajikistan that 29% of the 2000 plus foreign students in Tajikistan come from Iran.

U.S. Assistant Secretary for South and
Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake has called on Tajikistan's leadership
to hold a fair, democratic, and transparent presidential election in
November.

Blake started his two-day visit to Dushanbe on February 20 and has met with NGO representatives and civil-society activists.

No doubt this meeting had more people in it than Blake's meeting in Turkmenistan.

Assistant
Secretary of State for Central and South Asia Robert O. Blake, Jr. and
President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan, February 20, 2013. Photo by President.tj.

President.tj reports:

It was emphasized that the US continues to provide support to
Tajikistan's initiatives to intensify its struggle with terrorism,
extremism, unlawful narcotics trade, and to further assist in the
strengthening of the defense of the state borders with Afghanistan, and
material and technical provision of the relevant state agencies.

DUSHANBE, February 14, 2013, Asia-Plus -- Tajik Ambassador to the
United States, Nouriddin Shamsov, has called on Washington to remove
Tajikistan from Jackson-Vanik restrictions.

According to Silk Road Newsline, Ambassador Shamsov has noted that
Tajik economy shows steady progress, the country will officially join
the WTO on March 2, 20012 and it’s time for the United States to
graduate Tajikistan from the restrictive Jackson-Vanik amendment.

“My government anticipates continuing effective bilateral cooperation
with U.S. Government to lift as soon as possible the Jackson-Vanik
amendment which would impede as we do believe full fledged membership of
Tajikistan in the WTO and further promotion of bilateral trade and
investment relations with the Unites States of America,” Shamsov told a
panel on the WTO at the at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (CACI) in
Washington on February 13.

Tajikistan is ready to offer its territory for transit of freight by
international allied forces in Afghanistan, and there are no obstalces
regarding this issue. Davlat Nazriev, head of the Agency for
Information, Press Analysis and Foreign Policy Planning of the Foreign
Affairs of Tajikistan announced at a briefing.

"In the event of an appeal from any country, this question will be reviewed through the established procedures," he emphasized.

The purpose of Robert Blake's visit to Dushanbe is to obtain a final decision on the issue of deploying American and NATO military facilities on the territory of Tajikistan, since the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has already begun, and the US immediately demands hard guarantees, says Aleksandr Knyazev, coordinator of regiona programs for the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Seciences, regnum.ru reported February 20.

In the expert's opinion, "It is still not too late for Russia to stop this process, otherwise before the end of this year, another process may be initiated regarding the withdrawal of the Russian military base from Tajikistan. Evidently the US is placing its bets on Rahmon according to the principle, 'he's a bastard but our bastard," and it's understandable that they are absolutely indifferent to the nation of this regime when it's a question of the strategic plans for deploying part of the troops withdrawn from Afghanistan in the countries of the region."

Knyazev sees the situation crudely -- bribes to key officials, and support for a "thin layer of Westernized youth" and some of the intelligentsia that are "nationalist-minded" and see the West as "the lesser of two evils". This "layer" will activate "numerous Western NGOs for 'colour scenarios', not to really bring them about but as "a lever of pressure on Rahmon".

The United States Embassy in Dushanbe, Export Control and Related
Border Security program (EXBS) and Office of Military Cooperation (OMC)
provided twenty-two All - Terrain Vehicles (ATV’s), thirty-three light
trucks and additional tactical equipment to the Government of
Tajikistan. The ATV’s will be distributed to border posts throughout
Tajikistan to assist Border Guard units in their efforts to combat
contraband from entering and transiting the country. The light trucks
and tactical equipment will similarly benefit Border Guard detachments,
outposts, and units, increasing their capacity for securing the Tajik
border from external threats.

Deputy Chief of Mission, Sarah Penhune participated in a donation
ceremony at the Border Guard Facility in Dushanbe. Ms. Penhune
remarked, “The United States Government shares the goals of the
Government of Tajikistan to combat the threat of contraband and drug
trafficking and recognizes that keeping Tajikistan’s borders secure is a
national priority. The Border Guards are the first line of defense for
Tajikistan from external threats, and they are frequently required to
carry out this important work with limited resources, in very difficult
terrain, and often during very challenging weather conditions. The U.
S. Embassy EXBS and OMC programs are pleased to assist the Border Guard
in their efforts to combat the threat of contraband and drug
trafficking.”

At a meeting to honour the 20th anniversary of Tajikistan's Armed Forces, the president called on the military and law-enforcement agencies to take into account growing "threats of modernity" such as terrorism, extremism and narcotics, regnum. ru and president.tj reported.

"I have noted many times and emphasize once again that security the security of the state and nation, protecting civilian life and the socio-economic development of the country directly depends on the political situation, law and order, guarantee of the rule of law, combatting crime and protecting our boarders," the news agency Avesta reported, citing the president.

A Russian human rights activist who has worked closely with Sattori suggests
[ru] that the assault on Sattori was a “political order,” and that the
journalist was punished for his ties with Quvvatov and his recent
attempts to mobilize international pressure in order to prevent the
politician's extradition to Tajikistan. It is unclear what the
journalist himself makes of the attack. In his interview with Radio
Ozodi, Sattori said [ru] he did not know whom to blame for an apparent attempt on his life. A bit later, however, he told [ru] BBC he knew who was behind the attack, suggesting also that this was a powerful person within the Tajik government.

A court in Ukraine has ruled that former Tajik Prime Minister Abdumalik
Abdullojonov can be held in detention for up to 40 days while
authorities await documents from Dushanbe regarding his possible
extradition.

Abdullojonov was arrested on February 5 at Boryspil Airport near Kyiv on
an international warrant after arriving from the United States.

Tajikistan's Foreign Ministry has made an official announcementi n which it has condemned the statement by Ayatollah Said Muhammad Bokiri Harrozi, a presidential candidate, that in the event that he becomes president of Iran, then Tajikistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan will be returned to Iran, news.tj reported.

"They support democratic transitions in 'Kyrzakhstan' and Georgia,
mindful from our own experience that it takes a long time to get
democracy right, and that it rarely happens right away.”

In a telephone conversation Kerry also thanked Kazakhstan for agreeing to hold talks on Iran's nukes.

State.gov's transcript has it correctly as "Kyrgyzstan". But at about 30:14 or so on the video tape, you can hear Kerry make a slight muff of the name of this Central Asian country. Even so, the overall message in support of democracy, lest anyone think only the neo-cons will carry this torch, is clear:

We value human rights, and we need to tell the story of America’s
good work there, too. We know that the most effective way to promote the
universal rights of all people, rights and religious freedom, is not
from the podium, not from either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s from
the front lines – wherever freedom and basic human dignity are denied.
And that’s what Tim Kaine understood when he went to Honduras.

The brave employees of State and USAID – and the Diplomatic Security
personnel who protect the civilians serving us overseas – work in some
of the most dangerous places on Earth, and they do it fully cognizant
that we share stronger partnerships with countries that share our
commitment to democratic values and human rights. They fight corruption
in Nigeria. They support the rule of law in Burma. They support
democratic institutions in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, mindful from our own
experience that it takes a long time to get democracy right, and that it
rarely happens right away.

In the end, all of those efforts, all of that danger and risk that
they take, makes us more secure. And we do value democracy, just as
you’ve demonstrated here at UVA through the Presidential Precinct
program that’s training leaders in emerging democracies.

01/24/2012

The State Departmented posted a report "The Growing Humanitarian Problem Posed by Aging and Poorly Maintained Munitions Storage Sites."

More than half of the accidents in the list of examples (15 out of 28) are in Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia as well as India and Afghanistan.

Since the 1990s, there have been an increasing number of catastrophic explosions at arms storage facilities around the world. The frequency of such incidents has increased as urban populations have expanded outward from city centers to the vicinity of what were often previously isolated depots. The Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs (PM/WRA) and the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency remain committed to helping to confront this problem.

Since 2001, the United States has partnered with more than 30 countries to promote safe disposal of surplus and aging weapons and munitions, including more than 1.5 million small arms and light weapons, more than 90,000 tons of munitions, and approximately 32,700 man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). In addition, U.S. experts have provided assistance to improve stockpile management practices. On several occasions, PM/WRA has also deployed its Quick Reaction Force to help other countries mitigate risks from potentially dangerous depots, as well as to safely remove and dispose of unexploded ordnance (UXO) following incidents at these facilities.

According to Small Arms Survey, there were 275 accidental explosions at munitions depots between January 1998 and July 2011, causing hundreds of fatalities, thousands of injuries, and tens of thousands of people to be displaced. As munitions deteriorate further, new tragedies will follow unless this problem is more widely acknowledged and addressed. These “dangerous depots” have the potential to create even more casualties on an annual basis than landmines and explosive remnants of war. Following are some examples of these incident

Among them is of course the explosion of the munitions depot in Abadan outside of Turkmenistan, where at least 15 people were killed but possibly many more. We never did get to the bottom of the death toll there with so many conflicting reports. Also, Ulyanovsk, where two firefighters died.